That's a long time ago. I've been working on my own open source project for 2 and a half years. It's good too know that these kinds of projects take a while to gain traction.
I first heard about RethinkDB in 2015. I gave it a really thorough tryout and I liked it.
It's the first database that makes NoSQL worthwhile for me - I love how easy it is to configure and scale.
Also the query language is really clean and simple - You can learn it as you go along (unlike SQL, you don't have to know it all up-front in order to use it efficiently).
I'm genuinely confused: how can you develop a new database without a technical co-founder? I mean they clearly pulled it off but how did they even start?
I believe Slava was looking for an extra technical cofounder. He is extremely technical himself. Eventually it was him and two other people - Mike, who is sort of semi-technical (he doesn't write the DB afaik, but works on many other things) and Lief, who is a very technical guy, but moved on fairly early.
Source: I slept on the floor of their home/office for a few nights in '09.
I was the first employee at Rethink, very much not an "I just need a technical cofounder post" but a let's fill out our founding team with even more technical expertise.
I first heard about RethinkDB in 2015. I gave it a really thorough tryout and I liked it.
It's the first database that makes NoSQL worthwhile for me - I love how easy it is to configure and scale. Also the query language is really clean and simple - You can learn it as you go along (unlike SQL, you don't have to know it all up-front in order to use it efficiently).